SynthesisEnvironmental research2022
The impact of air pollution on COVID-19 incidence, severity, and mortality: A systematic review of studies in Europe and North America.
Synthesis in Environmental research, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 35 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
35 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Strategic environmental assessment-exploring connections between environmental and health issues.Environmental management · 2025Pooled it
- Impact of air pollution on exacerbations of respiratory and cardiovascular diseases for the intensivist: a narrative review.Intensive care medicine experimental · 2026Review
- Spatial and neighborhood data in the collaborative cohort of cohorts for COVID-19 Research (C4R).PloS one · 2026Observational
- Consideration of Cardiovascular Morbidities in the Relationship between Ambient Air Pollution Exposure and Individual-Level Adverse COVID-19 Outcomes: A Systematic Review.Current epidemiology reports · 2025Article
- A case-crossover analysis of short-term PMCommunications medicine · 2025Article
- Clustering-based methodology for comparing multi-characteristic epidemiological dynamics with application to COVID-19 epidemiology in Europe.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Environmental Exposures and COVID-19 Experiences in the United States, 2020-2022.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Neighborhood environmental vulnerability factors strongly drove COVID-19 fatality and excess all-cause mortality in New York City, while long-term air pollutant associations were weak and varied.The Science of the total environment · 2025Article
- Modulation of COVID-19 incidence by environmental stressors is variant between pre-Omicron and Omicron periods.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- COVID-19 and its association with meteorological, climate, and environmental factors: A systematic review.Journal of public health research · 2025Review
- Effects of Long-Term Air Pollution Exposure on Disease Outcomes and Hybrid Immune Responses in SARS-CoV-2 Breakthrough Infections: A Study of the Yichang COVID-19 Antibody Longitudinal Survey (YC-CALS) in China.Environmental health perspectives · 2025Article
- The association between different timeframes of air pollution exposure and COVID-19 incidence, morbidity and mortality in German counties in 2020.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2024Article
- Environmental Risk Factors for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.Clinics in chest medicine · 2024Review
- Upstream Oil and Gas Production and Community COVID-19 Case and Mortality Rates in California, USA.GeoHealth · 2024Article
- The Geographical Conditioning of Regional Differentiation Characterising the COVID-19 Pandemic in European Countries.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Air Pollution in Relation to COVID-19 Morbidity and Mortality: A Large Population-Based Cohort Study in Catalonia, Spain (COVAIR-CAT).Research report (Health Effects Institute) · 2024Article
- Article
- Ambient air pollution exposure and COVID-19 related hospitalizations in Santiago, Chile.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Long-Term Particulate Matter Exposure and Mortality in Hospitalized Patients with COVID-19 in South Korea.Annals of the American Thoracic Society · 2024Article
- Magnitude and determinants of excess total, age-specific and sex-specific all-cause mortality in 24 countries worldwide during 2020 and 2021: results on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic from the C-MOR project.BMJ global health · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAir pollution is speculated to increase the risks of COVID-19 spread, severity, and mortality.
objectivesWe systematically reviewed studies investigating the relationship between air pollution and COVID-19 cases, non-fatal severity, and mortality in North America and Europe.
methodsWe searched PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus for studies investigating the effects of harmful pollutants, including particulate matter with diameter ≤2.5 or 10 μm (PM
resultsFrom 2,482 articles screened, we included 116 studies reporting 355 separate pollutant-COVID-19 estimates. Approximately half of all evaluations on incidence were positive and significant associations (52.7%); for mortality the corresponding figure was similar (48.1%), while for non-fatal severity this figure was lower (41.2%). Longer-term exposure to pollutants appeared more likely to be positively associated with COVID-19 incidence (63.8%). PM DISCUSSION: Air pollution may be associated with worse COVID-19 outcomes. Future research is needed to better test the air pollution-COVID-19 hypothesis, particularly using more robust study designs and COVID-19 measures that are less prone to measurement error and by considering co-pollutant interactions.
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